Note to Techies – Tell Us What is In It For Small Business Owners!

by Nov 13, 2008Blog, Content | Social Media | Email, Marketing2 comments

I am not a techie. I say that on a regular basis – I’m too old, I’m a girl, and I don’t have a technical background.  But somewhere along the way, with the help of some very good teachers ( thanks Dave Anderson, Doug Karr, Jim Brown and Kyle Lacy) I have become very comfortable with blogging and social media in general.

So comfortable, I have started to talk like a techy.  And until today,  I thought that was really cool.  Then I read a very smart post by Louis Gray and I remembered what it was like not to be on the outside, looking in, thinking this was all a huge waste of time.   He said simply:

What we need to do is help translate these honestly geeky tools into something that makes sense to the mainstream. Instead of talking about how many people you’re following, APIs and how you use TweetDeck to follow specific terms in Twitter, start by explaining that the service is essentially text messaging that gets recorded and can be sent to many people at once.

I will take it a bit further.   Why should small business owners use Twitter?  Two reasons:

  1. If you are blogging, this is a nice extension.  A good way to put your information out in front of a wider audience.   Sometimes it is good to go where the people are instead of always trying to bring the traffic to you.
  2. As you get better at it, you can learn so much by following the right people.  Who are they?   For everyone, the “right people” are different.  It takes time to find the balance.  Unlike many Twitter users I don’t follow thousands of people, but I am always adding new folks to the mix.

My advice to other non-techies, log on, give it a try, and to the tech folks I will leave with one more quote from Louis’ article:

“Look, tech dork, software doesn’t solve problems, humans solve problems.”